The Truth and the Hype of Hypnosis: ‘…the study of hypnotic phenomena is

now squarely in the domain of normal cognitive science, with papers on hypnosis published in some

of the most selective scientific and medical journals. Of course, spectacles such as “stage hypnosis”

for entertainment purposes have not disappeared. But the new findings reveal how, when used

properly, the power of hypnotic suggestion can alter cognitive processes as diverse as memory and

pain perception.’ Scientific American

Dead Man Talking: “When all that’s left of your loved one is a voice on an answering machine, how can you hit delete? … People have been struggling to deal with the artifacts their late lamented leave behind at least since humans began to bury their dead… But it’s the unearthly outgoing announcements on the answering machines that have given ‘Hi, I’m not here right now’ new meaning. Washington Post

Veteran U.S. Envoys Seek End to Executions of Retarded; they ‘say the practice puts the

United States at odds with the rest of the

world, creates diplomatic friction, especially

with European allies, tarnishes America’s

image as the champion of human rights and

harms broader American foreign policy

interests.

Calling the execution of the mentally

retarded a “cruel and uncivilized practice,”

the diplomats say that it subjects the United

States to “daily and growing criticism from

the international community.” ‘ New York Times

‘I tawt I taw’ a bunny wabbit at Disneyland: New evidence shows false memories can be created EurekAlert! [thanks, Tom]

Hackers Lay Off Death Video. No signs yet of hacker interception of the video feed of McVeigh’s death. Wired

They Think They Feel Your Pain. “Munchausen’s by Internet” is easier than the real thing, and just as compelling. Wired

Daring Marketers Add Fizz To Fruit, Milk, Cereal, Yogurt. Believe this publicity and brace yourself for an onslaught of carbonation in all sorts of food ranging from coffee to fruit and breakfast cereal. An adherent suggests that a small carbonation box will be the next must-have kitchen appliance. It’s Pop Rocks for the new millennium.

Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ’74 — “The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February,

2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable

brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient

in cannabis.’ AlterNet

In Virginia, Young Conservatives Learn How to Develop and Use Their Political Voices: “boot camp for young conservatives who aspire to power.” New York Times

David Horowitz is at it again: The AIDS epidemic is the fault of gay activists Salon

America’s newest celebrity dies in Terre Haute; media coverage is inane.

Review: The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy

by Noreena Hertz argues that

“a combination of globalisation, and the growing power of major

corporations, mainly American and European, is rendering democratic

governments impotent to influence key decisions that affect the lives of

ordinary people. So far, so conventional. But she takes the argument one

step further. In surrendering to the global capitalists, governments are

themselves debasing democracy, making it quite useless for people to

vote. People sense their powerlessness and the redundancy of ballot-box

politics, and take to the streets of Seattle, Davos, the City of London,

or wherever.

So direct action usurps democracy.” The Guardian UK

A Mind for Consciousness: Can we find specific neuron groups in our brains that are the seat of consciousness? Can we get at this with an animal model, when it’s not even certain animals are ‘conscious’ in the required sense? Hero worship of a neuroscientist tattooed with the Apple logo… Scientific American

AFI’s 100 Years…100 Thrills. The American Film Institute’s list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies.

A Vegas for veterans: “The planned World War II monument looks like a white elephant. Why not

focus on rebuilding lives rather than a feel-good memorial?” Arianna Huffington in

Salon

Time for justice in Oklahoma: “Although it was an unfortunate tragedy, the Oklahoma City bombing was

not — as it has been labeled in the media — the worst act of domestic

terrorism in peacetime America. If body count, property destruction and

the generational effect on human life is the measure, then the worst act

of domestic terrorism in peacetime America was the 1921 massacre of an

estimated 300 mostly African-Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma.” Tompaine.com

The Untamed Sounds of ‘Outside Music’; listening to music that “exists outside just

about everyone’s cultural radar.” New York Times

Court Rules on Heat – Sensor Searches. A home marijuana grower was convicted after a search occasioned by a heat-sensing device detected the heat of his grow-lamps through his walls. Now the Supreme Court upholds his contention that the search violated his privacy; that it was more like an unreasonable search and seizure than it was like merely seeing something from outside the house. This surprising pro-privacy ruling came from a 5-4 majority which crossed ideological lines, uniting Scalia (who wrote the opinion) and his shadow Clarence Thomas with liberals Ginzburg, Souter and Breyer. The cynical, conspiratorial me suspects that they shuffled the alliances on this one — relatively inconsequential, in that it doesn’t hamper law officers with heat-sensing equipment too much to get a warrant for such a search — to deflect criticism about how fundamentally inflexible and divided the Court is. New York Times

The Court also ruled that, while a child born to an American mother is automatically a U.S. citizen, no such automatic right devolves upon a child born to an American father. As NPR put it, this was the first time in decades that the Court ruled along lines of a gender stereotype.

Can he do that? “An increasingly

controversial Texas

judge orders a man not

to have sex until he’s

married.” This is the same district court judge “who made a name [yes, the colloquial name for a relative of the donkey. -ed.] for himself earlier this month after ordering registered sex offenders to identify themselves with signs in their yards.” Salon

Questions for Jeffrey Baxter: Crossover Artist: Explains how he got from a “tokin’ , takin’ it to the streets” Doobie Brother to a Republican chauvinist national missile defense advisor…

Would you give up rock ‘n’ roll to save the world?

Of course. I have been blessed to grow up in a country where I can pick up a

guitar and be able to pay the rent. But I could certainly have a full-time job in

the national security area and still play the guitar. A lot of people in Washington

play music.

Who on the Hill has chops?

Orrin Hatch is a very good songwriter. Congressman Collin Peterson is a good

guitar player and a really fine performer. Chris Cox is a fine lyricist.

Does he care how seriously the interviewer takes him? Be sure to read all the way to the end of the interview for Baxter’s cocky putdown of him. New York Times I wasn’t aware of “Skunk’s” new role, but here’s a Google search on “Jeffrey Baxter” and “missile defense” for some context. He’s identified these days as a missile defense consultant to the Defense Dept. and the Lawrence Livermore Lab, he’s got ties to conservative “freedom-fightin’ ” California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, and he’s a boardmember of the “Safeguarding America For Everyone Foundation” which lobbies for the deployment of NMD. In a 1999 New Republic article entitled “Bottom of the Barrel”, the California Republican party is described as “desperate enough” to attempt to draft Baxter as a Congressional candidate. [Oh, well, how much can you expect from a Doobie?]

The mind, the body – and how to talk yourself out of an illness. Because of accumulating data about the physical substrate of mental activity, essayist Robert Matthews thinks Susan Aldrich, whose new book Seeing Red and Feeling Blue he’s reviewing, had a brilliant insight in asserting that talk therapy must cause brain changes when it works. But this has been apparent to psychiatric practitioners and theorists for a long time, and research evidence is not new. Matthews is right about one thing, though; that , although these challenges to Cartesian mind-body dualism are compelling, it is a deeply engrained attitude in commonsense consciousness. But positing instead an unsophisticated holism is little better. Telegraph UK

Mobile Messaging: Not in the USA. “Yes, people in Europe and Asia can’t live without their short message service.

No, people in America can’t have it.” Lack of intercarrier interoperability and the pricing structure of cellular use in North America are the culprits. Wired

What is an emotion? “More than 90 definitions have been offered over the past century, and there are almost as many theories of emotion—not to mention a complex array of overlapping words in our languages to describe them. (Prof. Robert) Plutchik offers an integrative theory based on evolutionary principles. Emotions are adaptive—in fact, they have a complexity born of a long evolutionary history–and although we conceive of emotions as feeling states, Plutchik says the feeling state is part of a process involving both cognition and behavior and containing several feedback loops.” American Scientist Here’s an interesting table with various psychological theorists’ differing ideas about what the basic emotions are.

Medicine men threaten court action over traditional cures. ‘African medicine men are taking European scientists to

court to stop them “stealing” their traditional cures.

Healers from Zimbabwe have teamed up with others in

Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda to protect 10,000 native

treatments including toad secretions.

They are demanding a share in any of the profits made by

the drug companies now planning to exploit them.

The move comes after Lausanne University announced its

plan to market the snake tree bean bark lotion as a cure for

athletes foot.

According to the Daily Record one healer, Wimbiru Mhofu,

said: “I was born using this and the Europeans stole it.” ‘ Ananova

Can You Believe This? Study Examines Why Young Urban Women Have Sex — ‘the vast majority of young women who participated in the study

report that they have sex because they “like” or ”love” the person

they choose to have sex with. About one-third said the main reason that

they had sex was that they “liked having sex.” ‘

Why the Dysons keep faith in their genes: “Anyone yearning to settle down and live happily ever after should look for

a Dyson. New scientific research has revealed that over the past 800 years

members of the family have proved the most faithful and fertile partners in

Britain.

Dr Brian Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, studied the

DNA of 10,000 men with a broad cross-section of British surnames as part of

a project to map genes in Britain and Ireland. He identified the families likely

to have the highest proportion of identical DNA patterns in their Y

chromosomes – that is, those thought to have one common ancestor – and

discovered that, of the names surveyed, the Dysons had a remarkable 80 per

cent of men who shared the same pattern.

The Y chromosome is passed unchanged from father to son, so if a wife

becomes pregnant as the result of an adulterous fling she will bear a child

with the family name but not the family Y chromosome.” Telegraph UK

Bookies slash odds on alien life: “Bookies in the UK have reportedly slashed the odds on the

Prime Minister making an official confirmation that aliens

exist. This comes after a Scottish photographer snapped a

picture of a possible UFO.

William Hill has halved the odds after Mark Runnacles

snapped the object flying over Glasgow. Student

Alexander McCallum, 38, of Dalmarnock, also took a photo of a UFO over Glasgow, which

he says looks identical to Mr. Runnacles’, who works for a Scottish newspaper.” Cosmiverse

Bookies slash odds on alien life: “Bookies in the UK have reportedly slashed the odds on the

Prime Minister making an official confirmation that aliens

exist. This comes after a Scottish photographer snapped a

picture of a possible UFO.

William Hill has halved the odds after Mark Runnacles

snapped the object flying over Glasgow. Student

Alexander McCallum, 38, of Dalmarnock, also took a photo of a UFO over Glasgow, which

he says looks identical to Mr. Runnacles’, who works for a Scottish newspaper.” Cosmiverse

Bookies slash odds on alien life: “Bookies in the UK have reportedly slashed the odds on the

Prime Minister making an official confirmation that aliens

exist. This comes after a Scottish photographer snapped a

picture of a possible UFO.

William Hill has halved the odds after Mark Runnacles

snapped the object flying over Glasgow. Student

Alexander McCallum, 38, of Dalmarnock, also took a photo of a UFO over Glasgow, which

he says looks identical to Mr. Runnacles’, who works for a Scottish newspaper.” Cosmiverse

Americans ‘becoming more superstitious’: “A Gallup poll has revealed that more Americans now

believe in phenomena than they did 11 years ago.

It found that more people now believe in haunted houses,

ghosts and witches. The only phenomena to have seen a

decrease in belief is devil possession which went from 49%

in 1990 to 41%.” Ananova

Bookies slash odds on alien life: “Bookies in the UK have reportedly slashed the odds on the

Prime Minister making an official confirmation that aliens

exist. This comes after a Scottish photographer snapped a

picture of a possible UFO.

William Hill has halved the odds after Mark Runnacles

snapped the object flying over Glasgow. Student

Alexander McCallum, 38, of Dalmarnock, also took a photo of a UFO over Glasgow, which

he says looks identical to Mr. Runnacles’, who works for a Scottish newspaper.” Cosmiverse

Nowhere to hide: “We can tell you if you’re guilty or innocent. You can’t fool the lie detector that knows what you are thinking.”

You have just been arrested on suspicion of murder. You’re sweating it out in the interrogation room with a pair of beefy detectives. But your lips are sealed–you know your rights.

Then with a smirk they slip a thing like a hairnet covered in dozens of tiny electrodes over your head and sit you down in front of a computer. Pictures of the crime scene begin to flash up on the screen interspersed with multiple-choice questions.

Flash! A photo of a brick wall. Flash! “What lies behind this wall?” Flash! “Cement and blacktop?” Flash! “Sand and gravel?”

Flash! “Weeds and grass?”

You said nothing. You were even trying not to think. But sorry buddy, your brain just gave you away. It couldn’t help but show an electrical start of recognition at the image matching the memory of hurdling a wall and wading through a backyard of weeds as you fled. New Scientist

News Analysis: A Mideast Lull That May Not Last. Dismal outlook on the fragility of the cease-fire. Among other things, Sharon and another Israeli cabinet minister chose this moment to intensify efforts to undermine Arafat. Israeli critics say the statements were orchestrated, as one put it, “…to prepare public opinion, in Israel and around the world, for a

large-scale military operation that will topple the Palestinian Authority and lead

to Arafat’s expulsion.” Israel demands that Arafat “arrest en masse Islamic militants he released from detention earlier this year,” which he refuses to do. Paradoxically, hawkish Israelis see Arafat’s being able to restore calm as an indictment, not a credit; it proves, ending polarized debate, that he has indeed been in control of the Intifada and responsible for the bloodshed all along. In an atmosphere of such eroded trust, it is hard to see how any brokered agreement on security arrangements could hold for long with the difficulty of taking the next step of reopening political negotiation. New York Times

I join Jorn Barger of Robot Wisdom in saying about this photo, “Don’t miss — can’t describe.”

The Dramaturgy of Death. Garry Wills discerns fourteen types of capital punishment in terms of the social and emotional purpose served, of which a given execution embodies a certain combination. But, he argues,

“they all demand,

in logic, maximum display and publicity. The outlaw’s status must be proclaimed for people to act on it.

The other effects sought—whether cleansing, order enforcement, delegitimation, humiliation, repayment,

therapy, deterrence—can only be achieved if an audience sees what is being done to satisfy, intimidate,

soothe, or instruct it. “

But our ethos forbids “cruel and unusual punishment,” so we choose painless execution methods that do not disfigure, and

“we now provide (the condemned) with a long and costly

process meant to ascertain guilt, with free legal aid if he cannot afford his own, with counseling and family

visits, with reading of his choice and TV, a last meal to his specifications, a last request, religious

attendance, guaranteed burial, a swift and nearly painless death. We shut up his last hours from the

general public, and act as if this secret rite will deter by some magic of mere occurrence. We treat the

killing as a dirty little secret, as if we are ashamed of it. Well, we should be ashamed. Having given up on

most of the previous justifications for the death penalty, we cling to a mere vestige of the practice, relying

most urgently on one of the least defensible defenses of it, “

“…the insistence on using the deterrence

argument when it has been discredited by all the most reputable studies”, yet many politicians look to the polls instead of the policy studies in supporting the death penalty. Deterrence theory has the wind knocked out of it, too, by the increasing public awareness of the numbers of innocent people wrongly condemned to die, after “incompetent defenses, faked evidence and negligent procedure.” If the public knows it’s a matter of chance if the right person is caught and killed for a capital crime, deterrence won’t work.

“These considerations join longer-term flaws in the deterrence argument. Juries are readiest to

convict people for crimes of passion, sexually charged rape-murders, child-abuse murders, or

serial killings. To see these offenders caught will not necessarily affect the person most likely to

have the coolness and calculation that deterrence requires. And obviously they do not affect

other people in the grip of obsessions, mental instability, or drug- or alcohol-induced frenzy.

Plato was against executing those guilty of a crime of passion (Laws 867c-d), but our juries

reflect more the anger of society than the didactic strategies of deterrence. In doing this, the

juries fail to make the calculations that we are told future murderers will make. The whole

theory is senseless.”

Wills similarly disposes of the argument that execution creates ‘closure’ for the victim’s survivors. And he closes by holding our moral hypocrisy up to us in the mirror of our Clown Prince:

“Conservative Catholics, who are aghast at fellow believers’ willingness to ignore the Pope on matters like

contraception, blithely ignore in their turn papal pleas to renounce the death penalty (addressed most

recently to the McVeigh case). And I have not seen Bible-quoting fundamentalists refer to the one place in

the Gospels where Jesus deals with capital punishment. At John 8:3-11, he interrupts a legal execution

(for adultery) and tells the officers of the state that their own sinfulness deprives them of jurisdiction. Jesus

himself gives up any jurisdiction for this kind of killing: “Neither do I condemn you.” George W. Bush said

during the campaign debates of last year that Jesus is his favorite philosopher—though he did not

hesitate to endorse the execution of 152 human beings in Texas, where half of the public defenders of

accused murderers were sanctioned by the Texas bar for legal misbehavior or incompetence. Mr. Bush

clearly needs some deeper consultation with the philosopher of his choice.” New York Review of Books

Support San Francisco’s finest : Salon is on the block and unable to find a buyer. “Its woes suggest that the media adage ‘content is king’ is fine until the kingdom starts running out of cash.” Guardian UK

Rebecca Blood points to this news that warms my heart (in a minor league way). I’ve resented the supermarket and drug store “loyalty program” discount cards ever since they made their entry onto the scene, for two reasons. Most insidiously, they create a database of my buying history to hit me with more targeted marketing efforts. (What, did you think the store was doing it just as a favor to you??) And they drive up prices by reserving sale prices previously offered to everyone for a subset of their clientele. Personally, I’m glad to forego the discounts for my privacy, but not everyone’s resources allow that. I speak up, loudly, in the cashier’s line about my reservations every time the store personnel react with incredulity or negativity about my disdain when they ask me if I have the magic card. Now it seems doubts are being raised by some consumers, and some supermarket chains are dropping the programs. Christian Science Monitor

Playing as myself, I turn out to be Norm from Cheers! Who are you?

Still Fab by Charles Paul Freund: The resurgence of Beatlemania prompts an insightful revisionist inquiry into the sources of their original popularity. “By 1966, the Beatles were far more interested in melody than in beat, had largely abandoned the influences

from American country music and American blues that had been apparent on their earlier recordings, and

were building an increasing number of their compositions around narrative lyrics that told stories rather than

expressed adolescent emotions. The more they developed as composers and lyricists, the less they tried to

harmonize like the Everly Brothers or whoop like the Isley Brothers, and the more they drew on their own

roots in British popular music. While they continued to use rock elements to make their music, there is

almost as much British Music Hall in their later work as there is rock.

The apotheosis of their personal development is not the avant-garde experimentation of the White Album

(only a few of its cuts get much play anymore). It is Abbey Road, which, dear as it is to the hearts of many

rock enthusiasts, could just as well be hailed as the greatest pop album of all time. Certainly, it could have

been played almost in its entirety on MOR radio.” It was, by the way, not on a youth-oriented rock’n’roll station but a MOR station in Washington DC that the Beatles first caught on with American audiences. Reason Magazine

Haruki Murakami is the New York Times Book Review’s featured author, on the occasion of the arrival of Sputnik Sweetheart. Although the reviewer finds it “less ambitious than The Wind-Up Bird

Chronicle (which folds a devastating account of Japan’s occupation of

Manchuria into its paranormal plot), (it) offers an elegant distillation of

Murakami’s cool surrealism.” Links to reviews of his other books; an interview in which he discusses what Japan is reading with Jay McInerney; and first chapters of Sputnik Sweetheart and his new nonfiction piece on the Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Underground, about which I’ve previously written. While we’re on the topic, Francie Lin wonders exactly what’s so compelling about him, in Threepenny Review: “Haruki Murakami writes the most bizarre novels—dark, cool, eminently

rational in tone, they are nevertheless populated with psychics and

monsters, and frequently cut with intermittent dreams, or dreamlike

facts, or memories of dreams that only achieve a measure of reality by

forming the basis of his characters’ uneasy lives. His stories have plots

that in summary make no sense, and yet while reading, you are

propelled along by a suspense so great that even the most fantastic

elements of Murakami’s underworlds appear to be merely the logical

pieces of a broader, more coherent intent. The sensation is not entirely

pleasant; a friend of mine once complained that Murakami novels were

laced with heroin, and this seems remarkably apt, for the books have a

kind of drugged, heady fascination about them that quickly becomes

addictive.”

The End of Innocence? Zero tolerance for Canadian boy who runs riot with chicken finger The Register; and official Dr. Seuss site hacked to death.

Media circus deathwatch begins. USA Today

An FmH reader comments on confirm.to:

“The confirm.to trick doesn’t add a hidden tag to the email, it sends

the email to the people working at http://www.confirm.to, and then they

re-send the email, adding a receipt request to it.

This also means that when you use it, the people at confirm.to have a

copy of the email you just sent. You may not want that. Not to

mention, it only works if the recipient has HTML mail turned on.

Most modern email programs already have a confirmation option built

into it. With Outlook, for example, you can click on TOOLS, and then

REQUEST READ RECEIPT to do the same thing. Eudora, The Bat, and most

common mail programs have this as a feature.”

Jury Awards $6.4 Million in Killings Tied to Drug: ‘A Wyoming jury has awarded $6.4 million to the family of a man who killed three relatives and himself after taking

the antidepressant Paxil.

Though many lawsuits have claimed that antidepressants in the same class of drugs, which includes Prozac and Zoloft,

have caused suicidal or violent behavior, this is the first case a plaintiff has won, lawyers in the case said.

Charles F. Preuss, a lawyer for the manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline said the verdict on Wednesday was a surprise.

“This issue was raised in the early 90’s, and since that time all the scientific articles have concluded that these

antidepressants do not cause suicide or homicide or suicidal thoughts,” Mr. Preuss said.’ New York Times

When I heard that this suit was going to trial, I wrote here about how ridiculous it seemed. This verdict is just wrongheaded. Without establishing that the agitation was caused by the medication (which he had just begun the previous day) as opposed to the patient’s underlying psychiatric distress, the jury’s sentimental judgment on the pharmaceutical company’s liability seems to revolve around “the company’s failure to sufficiently warn doctors and patients that the effects of

the drug could include agitation and violence,” as the plaintiffs’ attorneys argued. They’re clearly going for the “deep pockets”; I’m no apologist for the pharmaceutical industry but the liability on this account, if any, belongs with the prescribing physician, who has the responsibility to be sufficiently informed about the medications (s)he uses, to provide informed consent to the patient to whom (s)he prescribes, and to adequately assess and followup.

It is one of my pet peeves that, as in this case, internists and other primary care MDs without sufficient mental health subtlety take lives into their hands by prescribing so readily for “depression.” The rest of the medical profession feels that what psychiatrists do is sufficiently arcane that comraderie with them is difficult; IMHO that should be more reason, not less, to refer rather than avoiding referring and trying to irresponsibly manage disorders for which they are ill-equipped and out of their depth (usually, with the usual medical hubris, without even realizing that that is so!) The drug manufacturers’ blame, if any, lies in targeting the primary care MDs so heavily in their marketing. If you promote the SSRI antidepressants as so easy to prescribe that any fool can do it, then any fool will. I emphasize that I know nothing about the specifics of the doctor’s actions in this case; my comments are generic. I’m mostly concerned because of the effect I’m going to see the publicity over this case having in my practice — on patients’ willingness to accept effective, safe and urgently needed treatments.

Juxtapose the above with the tragic mass killing of 1st and 2nd grade schoolchildren in a suburban Japanese elementary school. The “apparently deranged man” responsible for the act had an arrest record for attempting to poison students at another elementary school but had not been prosecuted because he was psychiatrically disturbed. New York Times

Controversy over high-intensity-discharge auto headlights USA Today

“Mr. Bush, you should heed the words of those you quote”.

Whoever writes speeches for President Bush either went to seminary or wanted to.

Bush’s major addresses are minor sermons filled with religious rhetoric…. Bush talked about “the weapons of the spirit” in a speech two Sundays ago. He was at the University of Notre Dame making a pitch for his faith-based initiative.

The President attributed the “weapons” phrase to Dorothy Day, who was a socialist, a pacifist, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. She died in 1980… It’s difficult to say what Day might have thought about being quoted by a man who made $14 million just for buying and selling a baseball team.

Day’s daughter and granddaughter didn’t care for it. In a May 23 letter to the Rutland (Vt.) Herald, Tamar and Martha Hennessy wrote:

“Dorothy’s life’s work was dedicated to picking up the pieces of human wreckage, the result of policies that continue to be perpetuated by the Bush administration.

It is shameful to have her efforts associated with an administration that gives priority to corporate profiteering over human needs…”

Memphis Commercial Appeal [via higgy’s page]

A source at MetaFilter reports that everyone was laid off from Automatic Media — which means R.I.P. Feed, Plastic and maybe Suck.

Procter & Gamble hoping to get more mileage out of olestra plant. Sales of the fat substitute have been disappointing, largely because of the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s consciousness-raising about its potential to cause gas, bloating, diarrhea and nausea as well as blocking the absorption of some nutrients. Now P&G is talking with federal regulators about using its manufacturing facility, currently operating at less than 50% of planned capacity, to make a similar substance that could be used to absorb oil spills and toxic chemicals for environmental cleanup. SF Chronicle

Chuck Taggart and I share the same unforgiving outrage about the theft of the American electoral process: ‘Read it. Be angry. And under no circumstances

listen to anyone who rolls his or eyes at you and tells you to

“just give up and move on”. ‘ Looka!

Where no Telescope Has Gone Before: “Radio telescopes, infrared and ultraviolet

detectors, x-ray and gamma-ray satellites — they’ve

revealed details of a cosmos teeming with exotic

objects like black holes and pulsars that don’t show

up through the eyepiece of an optical telescope.

Indeed, every part of the electromagnetic spectrum

has offered one surprise or another to astronomers.

Now, say astronomers, prepare to be surprised again. Just last month scientists at NASA’s

Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) opened a new wavelength band for high-sensitivity

astronomy: ‘hard’ x-rays.” Read more to find out about ‘hard’ x-rays and why this is such a feat. Science@NASA

Amorphophallus titanum – Web Cam ‘Latest update:

“Big Bucky” began to bloom this

afternoon after reaching a

height of 8 feet, four inches.’ [thanks, Higgy and Ditty!] Here’s another amorphophallus website, with better visuals, thanks to Looka!

Space News: Humans on Europa: A Plan for Colonies on the Icy Moon of Jupiter. “Frigid and ice-covered, Europa is believed to harbor a giant liquid ocean beneath its

crusty arctic surface, a primordial sea whose tidal motions are driven by Jovian gravity and

warmed by intense radiation given off by the giant planet.

Yet despite the planet’s fearsome environment, members of the Artemis Society, a private venture

dedicated establishing a permanent, self-supporting community on the Moon, also have set their

sites on the creation of a human colony at Europa.” And: “NASA selected two proposals Wednesday for possible

fly-by missions to faraway Pluto, keeping alive the possibility it will launch a spacecraft to the

yet-unexplored planet.” And: Asteroid Belt Like Ours Spotted Around

Another Star. “Astronomers announced today what they say is

the first solid evidence for solid rocks orbiting another star, an asteroid belt that might be similar to

the one surrounding our own Sun between Mars and Jupiter.

If true, the research points to the possibility of potential Earth-like planets in the making, or planets

that have been destroyed, or possibly even a giant planet like Jupiter that, though unseen,

orchestrates the chaos of collisions that created the debris.” And: Recent X-ray data suggests massive black holes were fed by monstrous galactic collisions.

Julian’s RockList Site: “At the end of each year, critics & readers of music publications select their favorite albums and singles

of the year.

Lists from publications including: New Musical Express, Melody Maker, Select, Q, Mojo, Rolling Stone,

Spin, & Village Voice, various European publications and several independent fanzines from around the

globe plus the complete John Peel Festive 50’s are included on this site.

There are critic single and album lists from 1974 to 2000, pop poll results from 1952 to 2000, personal

lists from critics including Dave Marsh and Robert Christgau plus All Time Best Film Soundtrack and

Banned recordings.” [via MetaFilter]

Place yourself on the Political Compass. I’m a solid southwesterner, as if you couldn’t already tell.

FBI Shooter in Ruby Ridge Killing Can Be Tried. Amazing precedent by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals finds that Lon Horiuchi can be prosecuted on involuntary manslaughter charges brought by the state of Idaho after an errant shot killed Vicki Weaver during the Ruby Ridge standoff in August 1992. His “malice or excessive zeal” invalidates the immunity federal agents are usually given for violations of state law in the performance of their duties. “The appeals court decision marked a fresh bombshell in a case which has been taken up by

right-wing groups and anti-government activists as an example of how federal agencies allegedly

trample the rights of U.S. citizens.” The vehement dissenting opinion used the usual hackneyed verbiage about the “chilling effect” this would have on federal law enforcement. Reuters

Cluster Ballooning: “I’ve flown helium cluster balloons nine times over the past several years, making me the most active among the three or four people worldwide

who have ever flown cluster balloons (see History and Technical Notes). A summary of my flights follows, along with links to photographic

accounts of some of the individual flights.” He’s been as high as 21,400 ft., with bottled oxygen and Air Traffic Control clearance. His next flight over the Sierras this summer will be used in a video using ballooning to teach math and science concepts to schoolchildren.

An Amorphophallus titanum, the world’s largest flower at 8′, with a fragrance like rotting meat, is about to bloom at the Botany Dept. of the University of Wisconsin. The plant is native to Sumatra and there have been only 15 blooms in ‘captivity’ in the U.S. The link takes you to a live webcam watching and waiting. Write me, please, if you happen to log in and find that the blessed event has occurred. [via MetaFilter]

Romany gypsies are threatening to sue IBM over its alleged

involvement in the Holocaust. ‘In a case similar to that brought and then dropped by Washington

DC law firm Cohen, Milfield, Hausfeld and Toll earlier this year, the

action revolves around IBM’s Hollerith tabulating machinery.

This is believed to have been used by the Nazis to track and identify

their victims.

“The spontaneous, unceasing, self-willed delivery to IBM Germany of

IBM machines….is a conscious and deliberate act of participation in

an administrative organisation dedicated to…racial destruction,”

said (the) groups’ lawyer…’ The Register

At last they’ve found life after evolution: “Entrants for this year’s Aventis Prize,

the world’s most important science

book award, have departed from the

usual formula…” Telegraph UK

Carnegie Mellon University engineers are working on the next-generation pogo stick; and Pogo is working on a 240 g. full-color touchscreen device smaller than a 3″x5″ card with full PIM, MP3 player, GSM and GPRS integrated phone, SMS text messaging, email, and HTML and flash web browsing.

Medical eyes glaze over Web hypnosis: ‘Medical authorities have denounced as “highly inappropriate” and “grossly negligent” a

plan by celebrity hypnotist Martin St James to offer his services over the Internet…

From June 22, at a monthly cost of $US25, Internet users will be able to log on and

self-hypnotise themselves to stop smoking or relieve stress. Mr St James, who says he helped cure himself from cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome

with self-hypnosis, will also offer free services, including suicide counselling.’ [Not only inappropriate and negligent; what happens if the user’s computer crashes or they lose their ‘net connection before they bring themselves out of trance (grin)?]

R.I.P. Francisco Varela (1946-2001) . John Brockman describes him on The Edge:

‘Francisco, an experimental and theoretical biologist, studied what he termed “emergent selves” or “virtual identities.” His was an immanent view of reality, based on metaphors derived from self-organization and Buddhist-inspired epistemology rather than on those derived from engineering and information science. He presented a challenge to the traditional AI view that the world exists independently of the organism, whose task is to make an accurate model of that world — to “consult” before acting. His nonrepresentationalist world — or perhaps “world-as-experienced” — has no independent existence but is itself a product of interactions between organisms and environment. He first became known for his theory of autopoiesis (“self production”), which is concerned with the active self-maintenance of living systems whose identities remain constant while their components continually change. Varela is tough to categorize. He was a neuroscientist who became an immunologist. He was well informed about cognitive science and was a radical critic of it, because he was a believer in “emergence” — not the vitalist idea promulgated in the 1920s (that of a magical property that emerges inexplicably from lower mechanical operations) but the idea that the whole appears as a result of the dynamics of its component parts. He thought that classic computationalist cognitive science is too simplemindedly mechanistic. He was knowledgeable and romantic at the same time.’

Bush Speak: An Interview with Mark Crispin Miller, the author of The Bush Dyslexicon: The

Saying of President Dubya. ‘(Miller) sees more in these verbal tics and grammatical bungles than just plain idiocy. In fact, the professor of media ecology at New

York University credits Bush for speaking a language television producers and talk show hosts can understand: one of superfice and shallowness, of one-liners and aw-

shucks answers. As Miller argues in his introduction:

“[T]his book is meant to shed some light on the propaganda of our time. The Dyslexicon attempts to give the lie to that enormous wave of

propaganda — a joint production of the GOP and the major media — whereby George W. Bush was forced on us as President, then, after his inauguration, hailed nearly

universally for his amazing charm, his democratic ease, his rare ability to be all things to all Americans, and so on. Our experience of this transparent coup has been

disorienting from the start.” ‘AlterNet

OxyCon Game: Anatomy of a Media-made Drug Scare. The author contends that the sensationalistic media coverage is untrue and irredeemably besmirches the image of a drug acknowledged as a major breakthrough in the treatment of debilitating pain. He says that “experts” deny that abuse of the drug outpaces growth in legitimate prescribed usage and that its illegal use is only a problem where “the usual street drugs” are not available. Well, I’m sorry, but this is typical muckraking journalism, and it’s confused and inaccurate. As someone observing from the front lines of the treatment of substance abuse, I can assure you how prevalent abuse of OxyContin has become in the past eighteen to twenty four months… among prescribed users who are better at scamming doctors to get it than doctors are in recognizing a con or saying no when they recognize it. The “dual diagnosis” patients we see with substance abuse and personality disorders or mood disorders, to listen to them, have the worst migraine headaches imaginable, or the most persistent lower back pain after their wokplace injury or motor vehicle accident, or insist they need their Oxy for dental pain or the dull, subjective ache of fibromyalgia, with a frequency far in excess of epidemiological data on the co-occurrence of these conditions.

Ridiculing concern by likening it to the ’30’s film Reefer Madness, as is done here, is the worst sort of ignorant yellow journalism.While War on Drugs hysteria may fuel publicity about the latest drug menace, that doesn’t mean there is not an epidemic of abuse. And you can expect one any time there’s a major therapeutic advance in pain management. AlterNet

So What Else is New? Bush brother blamed for unfair election: ‘Thousands of black electors in Florida were disenfranchised in last November’s election by an electoral system tainted by “injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency” a leaked report by the US civil rights commission says.

It accuses Governor Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, and his secretary of state, Katherine Harris, of “gross dereliction” of duty, saying they “chose to ignore mounting evidence” of the problems. ‘ The Guardian

Does the Constitution protect the right to talk

about how to foil copyright protection? Princeton computer scientist Edward Felton broke the music industry’s SDMI copy protection as a mathematical exercise but was scared off from publishing his results by threat of a lawsuit from the music industry. Nevertheless, bootleg copies of his, quite technical, paper are all over the ‘net. Now, with Electronic Frontier Foundation legal assistance, he’s suing the RIAA and the U.S. Justice Dept. for the right to publish, hoping to invalidate the “anti-circumvention” clause of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Salon

R.I.P. John Platt, unassuming British rock critic and cultural historian of the late ’60’s. New York Press

I wrote awhile ago about the Java toaster which gets a weather forecast off the net and burns the appropriate symbol into your morning toast. Here are the photos. The Register

Archaeologists Home In on Body Ornament Origins. The origins of human self-adornment have been shrouded in a veil of mystery. A new report finds archaeological evidence of widespread, persistent and standardized use of body ornamentation more than 40,000 years ago, emerging more or less simultaneously in Europe, Asia and Africa. It is suggested that, with burgeoning human numbers, the frequency of encounters with outsiders grew sufficiently to make it useful “to convey to strangers aspects of social identity, such as group

membership, gender, age and marital status.” Scientific American

“My hypothesis is that the genome is an internal expression of the ecosystem in which it lives.” Philosophical tract questions wisdom of genetic modification: ‘The relationship between the genetic material of living things and the ecosystems in which they live is

deep and changeable, says Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental

Research in Takoma Park, Maryland. In an essay that is being embraced as an important philosophical

advance by some environmentalists, Makhijani argues that tinkering with genes may upset the

environment in much more complicated and far-reaching ways than have been considered.’ BioMedNet

Researchers find many parents have ‘fever phobia’. “Despite the knowledge that childhood fever is a natural

body defense and not a disease, many parents continue to have a

”fever phobia” that leads to overtreatment and misconceptions,

according to a study published yesterday.” Boston Globe

The Botany of Desire: How Grasses Use People to Fight Trees New York Times

Toward True Security, a report issued jointly by the Federation of American Scientists, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council, blasts the National Missile Defense intentions of the Shrub administration as destabilizing, rather than enhancing, nuclear security. Here’s the Washington Post‘s coverage of the report. To claim that the most immediate nuclear threat is from so-called “rogue states” is preposterous. The twin threats of further nuclear proliferation and an accidental Russian attack from a failure of its aging command-and-control and early-warning systems are far more dangerous. Even apart from NMD, the U.S.’s maintenance of a large nuclear arsenal on hairtrigger alert is an outmoded cold war posture that could lead to accidental nuclear war in the face of such a threat. The FAS report was written by a 16-expert panel including former weapons designers and disarmament negotiators. In addition to giving up on NMD, they suggest a nuclear posture declaring our weapons to be deterrent only; decrying rapid-launch options, scrapping pre-set targeting plans, unilaterally reducing the size of our arsenal and retiring all tactical (battlefield) nuclear weapons, “dismantling them in a transparent manner.” We should commit not to resume nuclear testing and affirm a commitment to eventual disarmament. We should convince Russia to follow suit.

Sorry to be so shrill. I cover disarmament issues so often in FmH, as passé as they may seem, because of the extent to which I think we have to awaken from a deluded dream if we do not recognize the threat under which we still live and the insanity of the current administration’s enhancement of our jeopardy. Sorry, it’s abstract, but think about it.

Baby’s sex not linked to shape of mother: “The widely held belief that a woman’s body shape can influence the sex

of her children has been undermined by a new study.

Folklore has it that a curvy “hour glass” body-shape is supposed to

produce girls and a more androgynous shape, boys. Evolutionary

biologists thought this was because a a less curvy body is supposed to have

higher levels of the male sex hormone testosterone, which favours more

male conceptions.” Telegraph

Celebrate Remote Control Anniversary! “Tomorrow (June 7) is an important day

for couch potatoes: It’s the 45th anniversary of the marketing of the first TV

remote control.” Remember the 1956 Zenith Space Commander?

Phil Agre of the Red Rock Eaters mailing list, who is a nut for cheap writing implements, pointed me to this Washington Post blink about the banning of gel pens around the country.

Landmark Ruling Secures Native Land Rights: “On May 12th, 2001, the High Court in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, issued an extraordinary ruling that could have

sweeping consequences for indigenous land rights. After two years of litigation, the court upheld the customary rights of the Iban village

Rumah Nor, finding the Borneo Paper and Pulp company did not have the right to destroy Rumah Nor’s rainforest.” [via Utne Reader]

Aroma Therapy: In The Military, It’s Known As ‘Nonlethal Weapons Development’. Cognitive scientists research enhancing offensive odors in the interest of national security. Amusing mini-history of the ‘stink bomb’ included.

Least Common Denominator Dep’t.: Moviegoers confused: ‘Preview audiences who’ve watched

Steven Spielberg’s new movie, A.I., are having some problems with the

film’s title.

The initials “A.I.” stand for “artificial intelligence,” but exit polls suggest

many people think the title of the movie is “A-1” — just like the steak sauce.

New York gossip reporter Baird Jones claims the name confusion is so

serious that studio executives are considering putting the words “artificial

intelligence” in parenthesis after the title — a prospect that Spielberg is

furious over.’ [I could understand being confused going into the film, but coming out??!!]

The Intelligence Online news service’s list of “sites chosen by our journalists”: a rich set of links to intelligence services, foreign government sites, sites about business intelligence, computer security, infowar, terrorism, nonproliferation, money laundering, Muslim fundamentalism, etc.

A reader asks:

“I’ve been reading fmh for over a year now (I think; it’s so hard to keep “track), and love it. One thing has puzzled me, though: why do you call it “‘blinking’ and not ‘linking’?”

My reply:

I explained that once way back at the beginning. Just as a ‘blog’ is a ‘weblog’, a ‘blink’ is a ‘weblink’ . A friend suggested that there ought to be a special term for it and I ran with it. To take the wordplay further, just as ‘we_blog’, ‘we_blink’. I have yet to see it picked up by anyone else, though, so maybe I should give it a rest…

The Media Theory Site. “Social theory for fans of popular culture. Popular culture for fans of social theory.”

Time to Beta Test the New Wetware: an interview with Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky. “Basically, as an artist, my work is an

investigation into how culture gets made. I guess you could say its process

oriented… That doesn’t mean I’m going to sit down everyday and write “cultural

crit” stuff. Folks who I like to call “low level cultural bureaucrats” do that… it’s a

false and ultimately sterile way to try to beat culture into some kind of formula

that they then try to stamp their name on to make some kind of “career” and it’s

a modus operandi that disgusts me….” frontwheeldrive

Humble Pie: “As Bush dusts off the Reagan cowboy hat, there’s a growing consensus among even our

historical allies that America’s leadership role is neither inevitable nor advisable. If the

president doesn’t tread more carefully, he’ll find himself inflaming old animosities and, worse,

instigating new ones. It’s one thing to antagonize potential enemies–but do we really want to

antagonize our friends?” The American Prospect

California’s Progressive Mosaic: “Does California’s shift leftward signal

progressive change nationally?

California is more than just the Democrats’ electoral anchor, however. Increasingly, a number

of its cities are coming to look like Justice Louis Brandeis’s “laboratories of

democracy”–enacting minimum wage, health care, and worker-rights ordinances that would

normally be the responsibility of the federal government (if only the feds could be interested in

the conditions of working-class life). In city after city, a civic left has emerged in California,

with the state’s new-model labor movement–the most dynamic in the country–at its core.” The American Prospect

Sherry Stringfield returns to “ER”

We’re Just Dying to Work with You: “(M)any of the greatest (deceased)

actors in history are as busy as ever, toiling overtime, doing

everything from celebrity endorsements to cameo film roles.

Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, James

Cagney: all are proving veritable cash cows for their respective

estates, digitally reanimated for a whole new audience. And,

with the Screen Actors Guild strike threatening to paralyse

Hollywood, this year could be boom time for dead thesps.” Sunday Times of London

New Book Opens Hubble’s Space Images to Blind [thanks to David E. Anderson]

Thinking ‘drains the brain’. Too much thinking can be exhausting; the effect is more pronounced in seniors. Research demonstrates glucose drain from key brain areas with concentration. BBC

Mothers’ hormones determine tomboys. Ananova

Customized Computer Case Modifications: windows, blowholes, neon lighting and strobes, custom colors…

India to Levitate Flying Car: “An Indian boffin appears to have got the jump on his US counterparts

with a 12-rotor jambusting flying car.

Engineer Rakesh Goel expects the vehicle will be in production by

2004. He claims it is safer than a helicopter and ideal in crowded

cities.

Mr Goel does seem, however, to have overlooked the

consequences of giving the subcontinent’s legendary drivers access

to something which, in addition to left, right, forwards and

backwards, can also go up and down.” The Register

Israeli Survives Two Disasters: “Eli Yadid is the luckiest guy in Israel. Or perhaps the unluckiest.

When a building floor collapsed in Jerusalem, killing 23, Yadid was standing just beyond the killing

zone. When a suicide bomber blew himself up in from of a Tel Aviv disco, killing 20 Israelis and

himself, Yadid was just arriving.” He also survived a terrorist attack on his school when he was 16. AP

Johnny Paul Penry’s Texas death sentence overturned by Supreme Court. Penry is the severely retarded confessed murderer whose first death sentence appeal in 1989 was upheld by the Supreme Court in a precedent-setting decision in which they found capital punishment of the retarded to be constitutional but ruled that juries must be properly instructed in how to weigh the defendant’s mental retardation as a mitigating factor in sentencing. The Court at that time sent the case back to Texas for a new trial, and Texas still didn’t manage to get it right; the current Court ruling upholds Penry’s lawyers’ contention that the instructions to the jury in the second trial were no better than the first. This may all be a moot point, because the Supreme Court has pending before it another case, from North Carolina, in which it has agreed to reconsider the more basic question it rejected in the 1989 Penry case — whether execution of the mentally retarded fundamentally violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Dallas Morning News

R.I.P. Anthony Quinn, who died of respiratory failure in a Boston hospital Sunday at age 86.

Patience, a Password Led to Standoff’s End. “With visits and food, authorities earned trust of Idaho siblings. Tales of

neglect and filthy environment emerge.” LA Times

The Reviewer Who Wasn’t There Sony Pictures, Columbia’s parent, was forced to admit last week that David Manning, a reviewer whose glowing comments about even the most lame Columbia films, is a fake dreamed up by the studio’s advertising department.

The real question is why Sony had to conceive the counterfeit critic to begin with, given the world of movie junkets, where normal reporting standards don’t apply.

Reading the glowing newspaper-ad recommendations for even the lamest movie, you might wonder if those quoted critics are real. Unlike Manning, they are. Many are habitués of the junket circuit, an all-expenses-paid gravy train where the studios give journalists free rooms and meals at posh hotels and the reporters return the favor with puffy celebrity profiles and enthusiastic review blurbs. Sometimes studio executives will suggest what kind of quotes they need, and even shape the reviews to suit the studio’s goals. If a studio wants its movie pegged as “This year’s ‘Alien’,” the reviewer delivers precisely that. No one complains, and bad movies end up with great quotes. The junket troops are a mostly anonymous crowd working for obscure outlets like Wireless Magazine and Inside Reel, which helps explain why nobody—even people within Sony and Revolution—noticed that Manning was a sham. MSNBC

“Contacting the Congress is a very up-to-date database of congressional contact information for the 107th Congress. As of June 1,

2001 there are 509 email addresses (of which 201 are Web-based email homepages), and 535 WWW homepages known for

the 540 members of the 107th Congress. More traditional ground mail addresses are available for all Congressmembers.

Contacting the Congress has received many emails recently reporting that email addressed to Congressmembers is

bouncing back. It appears now that a recent study has confirmed what has been long suspected, Capitol Hill is ill-equipped for

email (the study refered to in the article is available online). This, combined with recent stories on problems with the Senate Email

Servers suggests that if your message is really important you should consider sending it via fax or phone (numbers

available here). It also suggests you should only mail your members of Congress, since spamming everyone in Congress just

contributes to this problem.”

My representative is one of the 31 who does not receive correspondence via an email address…

All-You-Can-Eat Economy is Making the World Sick, says the venerable Worldwatch Institute: “We’re eating more meat, drinking more coffee, popping more pills, driving further and getting fatter. Around the world we are consuming more than

ever before: but more than one billion people still don’t have access to safe water; natural disasters are taking a worsening toll; and we have yet to

vanquish some of the world’s biggest killers-diarrhea, malaria and AIDS-reports a new publication by the Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2001: The

Trends That are Shaping Our Future.”

From Neat Net Tricks:

CONFIRM.TO. There is a little-known feature that hides an HTML tag

which in turn triggers a relay system to post a read receipt to the

sender. The tag is planted in Outlook Express 4.x and Netscape Messenger

4.0 or later (and possibly any email software that supports HTML message

browsing). The message can be sent on any email software by placing

“confirm.to” in an address as: “anyuser@sample.com.confirm.to” (without

the quotes). When addressed this way, an email relay system intercepts

the mail, plants the tag in the message, and then delivers it to the

recipient to which it is addressed. When the recipient displays the

message online, the html tag triggers the relay system to send a read

receipt to the sender. No software or download is required for this to

work. The relay is performed by Postel Services. The first 30 such

relays per month are free and no sign-up is required. Greater usage is

available for less than 2 cents per receipt by setting up an account at

their site, http://www.postel.co.kr .